At Beijing Jiaotong University’s affiliated elementary school, a class of children, maybe six or seven years old, stand in a line in a rainbow painted hallway. A boy holds a replica handgun, and behind him other students grasp unwieldy fake assault rifles. Fake police flak jackets cover their blue and white tracksuits, and their heads swim inside too-big artillery helmets. In other photographs students practise drills, salute visiting soldiers, and arrange themselves on a sporting field to spell out “I [heart] u” next to a Chinese flag.

In the post that includes the photos, published online in April, the school says it has worked hard in recent years to conscientiously “promote the main theme of patriotism, and make it an important part of the school’s ideological and political education and moral education”.

“We will create a strong atmosphere of national defence education, carry out rich and colourful activities, cultivate students’ patriotism, love for the army, and organisational discipline, and cultivate their ambitions to build and defend the motherland from an early age,” it says.

The elementary school is among the thousands designated as “model schools for national defence education”, part of China’s push to increase military awareness and skills among its population – starting at younger and younger ages.

More designations announced in January by the ministry of education and the central military commission almost doubled the number of “model schools”. They are likely to be followed by legal changes extending mandated training including “cadet activities” to students under 15. A bill proposing amendments to the National Defence Education Law was given its first reading in the rubber-stamping National People’s Congress in April.

The amendments make more prescriptive what was previously a guide, emphasising the need for basic military training in high schools and tertiary institutions, and allowing it to be extended to younger students for the first time.

“All state organs and armed forces, all political parties and public groups, all enterprises and institutions and grassroots self-government organisations of a mass character shall, in light of their specific conditions, organise national defence education in their respective regions, departments and units,” the draft said.

‘Rebuilding the strength of the Chinese Communist party’

The growing emphasis on military training for civilians reflects a heightened nationalism in today’s China under Xi, who has also made clear his distaste for what he sees as declining masculinity in China, and the worsening risk that he could take the country into war over Taiwan.

“Requiring children to engage in performative military education activities at younger and younger ages normalises China’s increasingly aggressive foreign policy, and could potentially prepare the country psychologically for a contingency in which China engages in armed conflict,” said Bethany Allen, the head of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s China programme.

China-based analysts have also told media the ruling Chinese Communist party (CCP) is learning from the Ukraine war and the potential need to have a population that can be quickly mobilised for conflict.

Increasing militarism by China under Xi Jinping has raised the risk of conflict or hostilities with other countries, particularly over Taiwan. At the same time its armed forces, despite undergoing a massive overhaul and modernisation process, are reportedly struggling with corruption issues and low recruitment.

The defence ministry said in September 2023 that primary and secondary schools across the country had begun the new school year with defence education lessons, “planting a deep sense of patriotism, respect for the military, and concern for national defence in the heart of students”.

It’s not clear if the lessons are improving recruitment, and China’s punitive censorship culture makes it almost impossible to survey their impact on general opinion. Most published comments are similar to that of Feng Shanguo, a former soldier who took part in leading lessons at his child’s school, Neijiang No 13 in Sichuan.

“It can help children to build tenacity, courage, and hard-working qualities,” Feng told state media.

But Katja Drinhausen, head of Merics’ research programme on Chinese policy, said military education was just one aspect of a broader campaign to boost the CCP’s strength at a time when it was facing multiple challenges including economic downturn, sporadic social unrest, multiple regional disputes, and worsening natural disasters driven by climate change.

“It’s important to put together the different pieces of the broader ambition,” Drinhausen said.

“There is renewed focus on military training and creating identity and buy-in from the broader population on what the military does, which also serves to build internal cohesion when the party needs to find new sources of social and political legitimacy cohesion because the economy isn’t doing it any more,” she said.

“First came a renewed focus on patriotic education and what ‘makes China great’ in schools. Then came a rollout of national security education, not just the mainland but also in Hong Kong … I do think these are different layers that are part of a broader strategic refocus on rebuilding the strength of the CCP inside China.”

Drinhausen also noted that the military, the People’s Liberation Army, is officially the armed forces of the CCP, not the Chinese state or its people, and has been used in the past to violently put down domestic protests.

“It’s helpful to see the development when it comes to military and defence focused education [in the context of different possible scenarios] because when you look at it that way, all these measures aren’t necessarily solely a precursor for war but serve all sorts of crisis management for the party going forward,” she said.